


Like Real People Do

by Peapods



Series: The Kenobi Family Band [1]
Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-05
Updated: 2015-06-05
Packaged: 2018-04-02 23:25:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4077778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peapods/pseuds/Peapods
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe no one writes songs about the ones that come easy, but sometimes there is a future after lives are ruined and blood is shed. Padme and Obi-Wan learn to live after Anakin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Real People Do

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, a famous Veronica Mars quote is referenced in the fic and summary. Yes, I am a devoted LoVe fan. I'm also just drunk enough to finally post this damn thing after working on the tenses so long I want to throw my beer at the wall. So, enjoy!

Padme Naberrie Amidala is a strong woman. She has been a daughter, a queen, a senator, a wife, and a mother. But as she brushes the sparse, dark hair off her daughter’s brow for the last time, she can only wish she’d never laid eyes on Anakin Skywalker. Or maybe she wishes that he’d never laid eyes on her, that none of his ambitions and dreams had been realized, that she’d listened and stayed on the ship, that she’d never left Naboo, that she’d never become queen, that she’d never been born. 

Everything that had passed had felt like destiny, but not one she would have ever chosen for herself.

Bail and Leia disappear onto his ship and Padme turns to Obi-Wan, who holds her son naturally, easily. He meets her eyes and lets out a deep sigh. This so-called ultimate Jedi, a man thoroughly unaware of his own worth, cannot hide the deep well of guilt that muddies his eyes to a dull hazel. She shakes her head at him, unable to say the words needed to reassure him, but hoping that every ounce of reproach for his misplaced guilt is conveyed through her expression.

All the guilt belongs to her and Anakin. 

*****

Handing off Luke is hardly easier, but there is some solace that at least they are in the same system, on the same planet. Obi-Wan has promised to help with her meditation, with cultivating enough awareness of him that she can at least be assured of his happiness and his safety.

“We’re giving them their best chance,” she says quietly, as they ride side by side to the property Obi-Wan has acquired for them.

“Is that enough comfort for you?” he asks softly. She almost doesn’t hear it, it is so soft. Her bottom lip wobbles as she looks at him again. He has lost so much and even a Jedi must feel the weight of it. 

Self-loathing, her new constant companion, hits her again. It surges forward every so often to remind her not to let herself hope too much or allow herself too much relief.

“It is enough,” she finally answers.

*****

Obi-Wan listens to more music now than he ever has. His duties as a Jedi, especially in the last few years, hadn’t left much time for him to enjoy such simple pleasures. Padme had been the same. Now, they have few duties to distract them and the ambient noises and silences that characterized their former lives are maddening.

He cooks more than he’s ever attempted in his life, and he’s a passable chef. Padme is terrible at it, but won’t admit it. She subjects them both to bland pastas and salty soups with an expression of such stubborn stoicism that Obi-Wan usually cannot help but laugh, even as he tosses out a meal.

He laughs more than is possibly right for their current situation. They have complementary senses of humor, at times dark, almost always dry, and filled with a kind of verbal repartee that he’d enjoyed with his Master and few others. With Anakin, he’d had to moderate that humor, ever aware of his apprentice’s fragile ego.

He learns the path to immortality and tries to teach Padme as much as possible. Her Force sensitivity is not high enough that she would have ever been trained, but with his guidance, and a few tricks Anakin had shown her, they are able to feel one another in the Force. They can commune up to a point. He knows that she checks on Luke daily and wishes she had enough power to stretch out and feel her daughter.

He meditates about Anakin every day and every day the burden becomes a little lighter. Padme’s presence helps more than he thought it would. She might have made a good Jedi for her ability to compartmentalize and release her feelings. He teaches her how to do so to the Force and she’s better than Anakin ever was. Whenever he begins to feel the guilt, whenever the past sneaks up on him again, she finds a way to bring him back. She smiles or she laughs, she throws fruit at his head or elbows him in the side. She does something so unlike what she might have done before, like wearing a messy bun and casual activity clothes or dancing in the kitchen to truly terrible music, that he is jarred from his funk. He is so very grateful that she held on, that she didn’t let Anakin’s betrayal kill her. 

She keeps him young.

*****

They are meditating when he first feels it. Her hands are in his as they sit facing one another and their eyes are closed. In the cool early morning, their hands and their Force presences keep them warm. Padme breathes deep and releases her woes to the Force and that’s when he feels it.

It manifests in the swelling of his heart, a tingling that starts in his chest and travels to his hands, a warmth that heats his cheeks. He abruptly pulls his hands from hers with a gasp. She looks at him wide-eyed with surprise and he can’t stop looking into her eyes.

“What is it?”

Obi-Wan cannot answer. He gets to his feet and walks away from her, toward the edge of the cliff, numb and horrified.

“Obi-Wan,” she says, coming up to rest a small hand against his back.

His next breath is shaky.

“It’s okay,” she says softly.

“It’s not,” he says and cannot believe that is his voice, strained and raspy.

“I’m telling you it’s okay, Obi-Wan. I’m telling you it’s not a problem.”

He turns to her then, confused and anxious, “How can it not be? I have no right--”

“Stop it,” she says firmly. “You are allowed feelings, Obi-Wan, it’s not a right or a privilege, it’s just part of being a person.” She takes his hands again, squeezing them hard. “The Jedi way is no more. You are perfectly welcome to honor that Code and their memories, but please don’t suppress your feelings or disregard them on my behalf.”

He closes his eyes, still struggling, but relieved that at least she is not disgusted by his regard. “I do not deserve a friend such as you, Padme.”

“If it were a matter of what we deserve, Obi-Wan, you would be given everything you’ve ever wanted.”

*****

She’s not surprised that Obi-Wan has developed feelings beyond friendship for her. Their proximity and the depth of their friendship before could almost guarantee that the affection between them would deepen. She’s not surprised that he thinks it a betrayal to even have those feelings. To love, to desire the wife of his best friend and brother, has to be anathema to the loyal and steadfast Jedi.

She _is_ surprised by her own feelings for him.

Now that she knows how he feels, she can honestly examine her own feelings. This is not young love. This is not bloodshed and lives ruined. She looks at Obi-Wan, tending to their vaporators, reading satire, and chopping vegetables and can only think that this is what she should have had. This is what her parents wanted for her. She knew passion and heartache and forbidden love, but this was the sort of love that could _last_. Her parents had certainly argued and had their own problems, but they had worked through them. Anakin had never been home long enough for them to develop normal problems much less acknowledge the ones they already had.

She and Obi-Wan have a huge fight about Padme going into town. She insists that no one knew who she was and she would dress the part. Obi-Wan argues that he can’t take the chance, that he can hide himself easily enough, but the risk of being separated or soldiers or Vader is too much for him. She throws back at him that he is afraid, that he isn’t being much of a Jedi, and reiterates that she will be careful. He turns to her and yells. 

“Of _course_ I’m afraid! You are the most important thing in my life and I will not stake the chance of your loss on my own grossly inadequate skill!”

She doesn’t know what face she makes but he turns away, hand over his mouth, and leaves. She doesn’t go after him. She sits down and thinks about Anakin and fear. He had also treasured her and feared for her loss, but unlike Obi-Wan, he’d convinced himself that his skill would save her, not condemn her. She needs the men in her life to stop treating her she isn’t responsible for her own agency.

When he returns, they sit at the kitchen table and talk. They talk about Obi-Wan’s fears (“You need to release this to the Force and acknowledge that I am my own person and cannot be locked away like a child who cannot provide for her own safety,”) and Padme’s independence (“Please allow that one so famous as you, believed dead, might be recognized no matter what pageantry you employ to deceive.”) They find a compromise. They don’t go to bed angry or uncertain and Padme sleeps soundly.

She remembers the feeling of his calloused hand in hers, as he spoke of his feelings that night, and shivers. She wants this, them, whatever life they have managed to scramble together from the ruins of the old. She doesn’t want a near-death confession and a hidden love. She doesn’t want the agony of separation and uncertainty of the future. The latter can hardly be avoided, but somehow, she thinks that with Obi-Wan, the future will be so much more bearable.

*****

Obi-Wan doesn’t have a name for the kind of smile Padme has on her face. He knows how it makes him feel--unbelievably warm, nervous, shivery--but he does not trust his own emotional intelligence quotient to suss out its meaning. He pretends not to see it, looking intently at his darning work. He hears a small amused snort and looks up.

She’s looking at him expectantly, eyebrows raised, a smile lifting the corners of her mouth. “You’re not even going to ask? You don’t need to be afraid of the answer.”

But he is afraid, terrified even. The Force has been suspiciously silent on the subject of his feelings for Padme, giving him no insight nor censure. Now, he suspects that were the Force a corporeal being, it would be looking at him much the same way Padme is.

“Time to make a decision, Obi-Wan,” it whispers to him.

Quite without his permission, his breath comes faster even as he squares his jaw and stand, setting aside his socks. She practically leaps to her feet, already coming towards him.

Her lips are a revelation, soft and already opening to him, and he makes a noise like an adolescent. Her hands are in his hair and his own squeeze her back and side, unsure what to do and where to go. When they pull away, he keeps his eyes closed and rests his forehead on hers. 

“I love you, Padme,” he says quietly. There is a note of repentance. He does not know how she can accept his love, such as he can offer, and he still feels it is more burden to her than gift.

“Look at me,” she says softly. He does, taken in by her bright brown eyes. She gives him a smile, like she is telling him a big secret, and whispers, “I love you too.”

*****

There is little agony to their love. They go on as always, albeit more affectionately, teaching each other how to love the other best. Obi-Wan has felt love and affection in his life, but Padme teaches him to express it. She tells him it is perfectly natural to want to catch her around the waist as she passes and deposit a kiss on her lips. She asks him not to stop himself when he wants to hold her in the night. She reassures him every day that he is loved and that she accepts his love in return, whether it is verbalized or not. He, in turn, asks that she treat him no differently that she would another lover. That she also tell him when he is not being all she needs him to be.

Anakin is spoken of only once with regard to their relationship and that is to set him firmly aside from their feelings now. Padme loved him, yes, but he is her past. Good though Anakin still might be deep down, she releases her responsibility to draw it out of him to the Force. He is his children’s father, but Padme is no longer his wife in her heart.

Though they use fake names, she is no longer his wife in name after a year. They go before a local court one morning and then continue on with their shopping for the month. Padme is an _expert_ at deception, Obi-Wan should have realized this, and she has joined him on most outings since that first horrendous fight.

It _was_ only their first fight and there had been many since then. She had once picked a fight because Obi-Wan didn’t replace the toilet paper. He had once become incensed because she’d left a sharp knife in the sink. They once, honestly, fought about the best way to cut up the root vegetables needed for their stew. (“Force give me strength, it’s _freaking stew_ , Obi-Wan, who the hell cares how they’re cut?”)

But there are other moments that are so different from anything either of them knew. There is the time they start singing in the kitchen and end up dancing all over the house before Padme knocks over a vase of flowers that soaks the stereo and shorts it out. There is the time they are having sex and Obi-Wan farts in the middle of it, making Padme laugh so hard she has to throw up (she insists it was the alcohol). There is the time they accidentally adopt a womp rat (“Look at him, Obi-Wan, he’s all alone!”) and then “accidentally” lose him in Mos Eisley after he shits all over the floor, eats Padme’s favorite pair of shoes, and short-circuits Obi-Wan’s lightsaber.

Padme asks him only once if he wants children. Obi-Wan tells her that while he is not averse to the idea, the choice is entirely up to her. He loves children and would have loved Leia and Luke as his own had it been possible, but his desire for the company of children is not overwhelming, he feels no need to propagate his family line or any other such nonsense. This gladdens Padme’s heart as she is not sure she could handle having another child, with the other two being raised away from her and each other.

Together they learn that “happily ever after” is a state of mind, not a state of being. They are as happy as they can be with the bitter knowledge they carry every day. 

It is enough.


End file.
